I’m making some airships, inspired by tropical fish and the cardboard airships by artist Jeroen van Kesteren. Currently trying to figure out the shape language and how to give them satisfying animation style (I’m going for a sort of stylized miniature look). Also trying to keep them reasonably low poly to be fit for a game engine.
Any thoughts you might have on the designs and movement would be greatly appreciated!
Really lovely design and animation, great style that summons its own original world! I love it.
About the main blue ship, whilst I really like the blunt, very vertical, front, it could maybe do with a little feature. Something like a spear/spike like some of the drawings have, that would make it easier to read as the front of the ship.
About the animation, very good re-interpretation of fish movements. I think the bobbing and swaying works really well with the small red balloon and cabin, it makes it look very insecure and like it could break any moment, which is perfect. For the blue one, loving the sails/fins motions but maybe the roll/yaw/pitch of the body are a bit too fast, which messes up the sense of scale (unless that’s what you’re going for). A boat or zeppelin of this size would have a lot more inertia and slower movements, here, someone on the top bridge would have a hard time standing up.
But all those comments are nit-picking, it already look awesome as is!
Thanks for the suggestions! I will definitely make a slower version. I’m considering changing the front too.
I’m planning on making a series of these at several different sizes so having different tricks like that to help establish scale will be very useful.
What features are you using to get the fabric and wobbly effects?
Very nice.
It’s just bone animations actually. With simple sine waves on the rotation channels to create a twisting effect with overlapping action. The ribbon on the balloon is cloth dynamics though.
:Very effective. 
Thanks for the link to the inspirational artist.
Making some progress on the second airship.
I thought it would be fun to add a pilot.
Another airship. A kind of surveilance craft. The light cones don’t look that good in Eevee but it might just be that I didn’t set them up correctly.
